Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Pillars Of Youth Drug Abuse Prevention: Parents, Police, And Project Dare (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), Jonathon Stuever

Theses and Dissertations

In 1983 Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officials teamed with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) health curriculum specialist, Dr. Ruth Rich, to redesign an anti-tobacco curriculum, Project Self-Management and Resistance Training (SMART), into Project Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE). In the first four years of Project DARE, local, state, and, federal government branches endorsed the program as an efficient tool in the local and national fight against youth drug abuse. Early program evaluations, conducted by the Evaluation and Training Institute (ETI), demonstrated DARE’s ability to change attitudes of students, school faculty, and parents concerning social tolerance of underage drug …

Historical Trauma: Literary And Testimonial Responses To Hiroshima, Mariam Ghonim

Theses and Dissertations

The concept of trauma is controversial in literature. While one may be able to come up with ways to describe trauma in fiction, representing historical trauma is a hard task for writers. Some argue that trauma can not be described through those who did not experience it, while others claim that, provided some elements are added, one can represent trauma to the reader. This thesis focuses on twentieth-century historical traumas related to a nuclear catastrophe and explores the different literary and testimonial responses to the catastrophic man-made event of Hiroshima (1945). In this thesis, Kathleen Burkinshaw’s historical fiction The Last …

Eating German, The American Way: German And American Cooking Traditions, Potato Salad, And The Culinary Assimilation Of German Immigrants, 1820-1920., Scott Wooley

Theses and Dissertations

“Eating German, the American Way” explores how and why the mayonnaise-based potato salad came to be a staple of American culinary tradition. It examines how native-born Americans and German immigrants in the nineteenth century identified themselves based on their culinary traditions and what they ate and how the interactions between, and accessibility of, those traditions created a new identity based on the sharing of recipes as the two groups mingled and assimilated to each other. It uses food as a way to understand the processes of assimilation by defining the distinctions between the two groups based on their separate repertoire …

The Language Of Legal Violence: The State’S Role In Silencing Capitalist Dissent, 1877-1915, Jaclene Paolucci

Theses and Dissertations

From the 1870s to the eve of World War I, the United States government enacted a violent and repressive campaign against labor activists and political radicals to protect capitalist interests. The growing alliance between employers and the government threatened American democratic traditions and turned those who challenged the capitalist system into potential enemies of the state.

Political Commitment Of Hmong Americans: A Study Of A Grassroots Feminist Movement Against Abusive International Marriages 2007-2022., Ni Made Frischa Aswarini

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the Hmong American community-led movement against abusive international marriages (AIM) in Wisconsin as an instance of activism or resistance related to marriage-migration phenomena in the 21st century. Through an analysis of oral histories of Hmong American community activists, Hmong American community media, archival materials, born-digital sources, and other contemporary sources, this study incorporates experiences underexplored in U.S. historical scholarship. The findings unearth that the feminist movement against AIM emerged not solely as an active response to a trend of gender-based violence cases in the early 2000s but also as a resistance to the persisting stigmatization from the …

Let Go And Let God: An Ethnographic Study Of Overeaters Anonymous, Subjectivity, And Extreme Eating Distress, Abby Forster

Theses and Dissertations

Academic discussions regarding eating disorders have been dominated by two frameworks: biomedical and feminist. While the former explains eating disorders as a product of individual pathology, the latter asserts the cause is culture. An aspect of culture that is often suggested is neoliberalism. This ethnographic study utilizes the term “eating distress” to acknowledge the localized idioms that occur outside of the bounds of biomedical settings. The research documents the experiences of many members of Overeaters Anonymous dealing with eating distress within a social context in which their body types are stigmatized. The dissertation examines the relationship between subjectivity, Overeaters Anonymous, …

Children And The Cold War: Race & Hypocrisy Amid Fear Of Nuclear War, Richard D. Mctaggart Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

During the Cold War, American propaganda centered the wellbeing of the child in its messaging warning of atomic attack at the hands of the Soviet Union. However, despite American claims that all children were valued by the United States, this was proven untrue by its unequal treatment of Black children.

Common Ground Over Common Water: Defining The Public Interest In The Milwaukee Watershed, Thomas Anthony Gentine

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation examines government and nongovernment entities’ attempts to restore and protect the use and health of the Milwaukee River and its watershed from 1960 to 2000. Under Mayor Henry Maier’s leadership, Milwaukee worked to reclaim the urban riverway to stimulate economic growth. However, state and federal representatives, after the passage of the 1965 Water Quality Act, demanded that the city government prioritize updating the combined storm and sewer system to lessen pollution in the Milwaukee River. At the same time, other groups worked to save rural areas from unplanned development and further degradation of the waterway. Influential groups included …

Ocon At War: The Oconomowoc Home Front During The Second World War, Erika L. Laabs

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

OCON AT WAR:THE OCONOMOWOC HOME FRONT DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR

This thesis will examine the local home front propaganda in and around Oconomowoc, Wisconsin (Waukesha County) during the Second World War and compare the Oconomowoc area propaganda to Wisconsin overall and to the national experience. Enlistments, war bond sales, USO events, parades, radio programs/speeches, films, music, popular books/comic books, and images, are the main types of “cultural locations” that I am using as propaganda. I have found solid examples of posters and advertisement images from local newspapers that provide a wealth of information about the way fear, love, …

Simeon Hart, The "Milmo Affair," And The Confederate Cotton Trade On The Rio Grande, 1861-65, Leonel Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

The cotton trade on the Rio Grande played a crucial role in the transnational history of Confederate-Mexican diplomacy as well as the history of the American Civil War and the Second French Intervention in Mexico. The renowned merchant from El Paso, Simeon Hart, was an important figure in the cotton trade since he helped facilitate diplomatic and commercial relations between Mexico and the Confederacy. Due to his reputation as an emissary and supplier for the Confederate Army of New Mexico, Hart was appointed quartermaster of the Trans-Mississippi Department. During the winter of 1863-64, the son-in-law of the Governor of Nuevo …

(Re)Constructing Homescapes: “Archaeological Remote Sensing” And Ground-Truthing Of The Walker Place Homestead At Spirit Hill Farm, Tate County, Mississippi, Gabriel Griffin

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on an early nineteenth-century homestead known as the Walker Place homestead at Spirit Hill Farm in northern Mississippi. The goal of this thesis is to conduct a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and shovel test survey to explore how changing landscapes simultaneously (re)create and destroy senses of place or Homescapes. Homescapes have received little attention in the field of archaeology and have not been applied to Euro-American Homescapes. I apply this theoretical construct in a novel way as a venture to further develop an avenue in archaeology to be collaborative and understand the past in a way that accurately …

Pioneers Of Evacuation, Pioneers Of Resettlement: The Photographic Archive Of The Japanese American Incarceration And The Settler Colonial Imaginary, Christina Hobbs

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reexamines the photographic archive of the Japanese American incarceration during World War II produced by the US government, arguing that these images “restage” the evacuation, incarceration, and resettlement periods through a settler colonial “pioneer” mythology, thereby obscuring the precarity of Japanese Americans' racial positionality between “settler” and “native.”

The Roadmap To Iraq: How 9/11 Facilitated The 2003 Invasion, Michael Loren Shumway

Theses and Dissertations

The attacks of 11 September 2001 not only resulted in retaliatory attacks upon the nation of Afghanistan for its harboring of the terror cell al Qaeda but also for the later U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Although initial intelligence connected the terrorist group al Qaeda to the attacks, Bush’s administration officials began assembling intelligence on Iraq’s weapons capabilities and its possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction. In this 2002 National Security Strategy, Bush announced his administration’s position that the United States would react pre-emptively to threats against the United States or its global interests. This pre-emptive position opened the …

“Infantry Would Not Do:” Appalachia, The Environment, And The Evolution Of Mountain Warfare During The American Civil War, Lucas Michael Wilder

Theses and Dissertations

Union General Ambrose E. Burnside launched his invasion of East Tennessee in the summer of 1863. The corps he used consisted of half-infantry and half-mounted units to utilize their speed to overcome mountain obstacles. The successful campaign and the capture of the agriculturally rich region of East Tennessee and its vital East Tennessee & Virginia Railroad deprived the Confederacy of resources, ultimately contributing to Confederate defeat. The American Civil War saw commanders plunge into the mountains of Appalachia and encounter a terrain and a people with which many were unacquainted. This dissertation argues that their tactics and strategies for dealing …

Uncovering The Domesticated Spectator: Film Exhibition And Spectatorship In The Home, 1920-1950, Patrick Brame

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation builds on recent historical scholarship that adds complexity to apparatus theory from the 1970s by examining the experience of film exhibition and spectatorship in the American home from 1920 to 1950. While the screen, projector, and content of home exhibition influenced the spectator’s experience, so too did the domestic environment: blurring private and public spaces loaded with sociocultural tensions of gender, sexuality, race, and class. Through my investigation of amateur filmmaking magazines, primarily Movie Makers, Home Movies, industry journals such as The Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, and more widely read magazines like Popular Mechanics, …

Weeping All The Way To Zion: Vatican Ii, Catholic Social Ethics, And The Black Freedom Struggle In Milwaukee, Samuel Cocar

Theses and Dissertations

The Second Vatican Council convened between October 1962 and December 1965. In the years immediately following, American Catholics, as well as co-religionists the world over, were left to interpret and navigate an event and literary corpus which had fundamentally recalibrated not only the dominant theological method for the Church, but also redefined its posture toward the world and social issues. The established traditions of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) as well as the paroxysms of Vatican II, figured prominently in the Milwaukee iteration of the Civil Rights Movement/Black Freedom Struggle, in which one of the most visible figures was progressive priest …

Original Intent: Brown Vs. Board Of Education, White Backlash, & The Enduring Power Of De Facto Segregation, Aaron Brand

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the factors and outcomes surrounding Brown v. Board of Education of 1954. The events that predated it and the resistance that followed determined the chain of consequences from this perceived victory over racial bias. The calculated and persistent backlash against integration obscured Brown’s intent of educational opportunity.

“What Have We Got To Celebrate?”: Native American Contestation To Commemoration During The Late 20th Century, Jennifer C. Tennison

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how Indigenous groups in the United States have contested mainstream historical narratives of America’s founding during major commemorative events in the late twentieth century. To analyze this, I have examined two major national commemorative events during which Native Americans spearheaded a marked shift in the popular interpretation of national origins. The first event I analyze is the 1976 Bicentennial of the American Revolution; the second event is the 1992 Columbus Quincentenary. Native Americans contested the ways that the federal planning bodies for both events represented the history of the nation’s founding. How could they be called on …

Roots And Webs And Nets And Branches And Bulletin Boards And Banners And Newsletters And Mutual Aid Text Threads And Kin And Caretakers And Porches And Poems Of Today And Spaces Of Survival, Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo

Theses and Dissertations

As I welcome Richmond, VA into my family, I find myself needing to make roots and webs and nets and branches that ground me, that place myself as a Black, queer, mixed race, artist, activist, educator, storyteller, and cultural worker in this city. I am called to the streets before I am called to my studio. I question what it means to be a part of an institution that is slowly eating this city up. I become a story collector. I need to know where I am and whose land I now call home.

For Civilization And Citizenship: Emancipation, Empire, And The Creation Of The Black Citizen-Soldier Tradition, Henry Ian Davis

Theses and Dissertations

For civilization and citizenship: emancipation, empire, and the creation of the black citizen-soldier tradition examines the origins and evolution of black military service and its relation to how black and white Americans understood citizenship from the Civil War Era to the First World War. This dissertation analyzes how different generations of black soldiers pursued full, civic citizenship through their military service and formed their own vision of citizenship rooted in military service and how the War Department sought to deal with the tensions created by a biracial Army. While it asserts that a separate, black citizen-soldier tradition linking service and …

From Half-Free To Property: The Evolution Of Slavery In Dutch New Netherland And English New York, 1621-1712, Sarah E. Hendrickson

Theses and Dissertations

Between 1621 and 1712, Dutch and English colonists imported African slaves to present-day New York to help create a profitable colony. This thesis explores why the Dutch created a society with slavery and how the English transformed New York into a slave society during this period.

The Haunted History Of New Orleans: An Exploration Of The Intersectionality Between Dark Tourism, Black History, And Public History, Laura Foley

Theses and Dissertations

This research examines three popular ghost stories/legends of New Orleans that deal with issues of race. Madame Lalaurie, Julie, and Marie Laveau are popular subjects that are often sensationalized and removed from their proper historical context while treating legend as fact. This study not only analyzes the historical accuracy or historical context of these tales, but also addresses how these stories shape public perception and memory on topics such as race and local history. In addition, this study focuses on the intersectionality of dark tourism and public history and the ethical questions that often arise when the two meet.

“Matrimonio”: Italian Brides, Grooms And Birthplaces At Our Lady Of Pompei In Greenwich Village, 1924-1933, Brendan O'Hagen

Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes marriage patterns at Our Lady of Pompei (OLP), an Italian Catholic parish in New York City, during the 1920s and 1930s. It investigates whether intermarriage increased at OLP, but also links changes in marital practices to forces including government policies and demographic changes in the local community.

An Infinite Horizon: Space, Time, & Mind In The American Imaginary From Thomas Cole To Agnes Pelton, 1825-1961, Jason Friedman

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how artists, intellectuals, spiritual seekers, and industrialists represented the American horizon across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The purpose of this inquiry is to show how art transmuted ideological and religious beliefs across time and to demonstrate the interdependence of esoteric self-perceptions and American hegemonic power.

The Little Man With The Big Mouth Stands Up For Wisconsin: George Wallace And The Political And Constitutional Struggles Between Federalism And Equal Protection In Wisconsin Elections From 1964 To 1976, Ben Hubing

Theses and Dissertations

Alabama Governor George Wallace ran for the presidency four times between 1964 and 1976, bringing his candidacy north of the Mason-Dixon Line to Wisconsin. Wallace’s campaign in the Badger State fostered a debate among residents regarding constitutional principles and values. Wallace weaponized federalism and states’ rights, arguing that the federal government should stay out of school segregation, promote law and order, restrict forced busing, and reduce burdensome taxation. White working-class Wisconsinites armed themselves with Wallace’s rhetoric, pushing back on social and political changes that threatened the status quo. Civil rights activists and the black community in Wisconsin armed themselves with …

Dimly Remembered, Largely Forgotten: The Mitchell Hall Tablet As A Mirror To American Great War Memory, Stephen Mark Baldwin

Theses and Dissertations

War thrusts men and women, communities and nations into unfamiliar and otherwiseunlikely situations and associations. And it is war in general, and twentieth-century warfare in particular, that has engendered widespread commemoration and remembrance of its combatants and victims. This thesis recounts the story of ten men who share at least three things in common: they all attended the Milwaukee Normal School sometime during the early years of the twentieth century; they all perished in the service of the United States Armed Forces during the First World War; and they are all commemorated on a simple and somewhat forlorn bronze tablet …

People From Everywhere: Metis Identity, Kinship And Mobility 1600s-1800s, Mark Edward Langenfeld

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

PEOPLE FROM EVERYWHERE: METIS IDENTITY, KINSHIP AND MOBILITY, 1600s-1800s

by

Mark Langenfeld

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2021Under the Supervision of Professor Margaret Noodin

People from Everywhere: Metis Identity, Kinship and Mobility, 1600s-1800s, is a discussion of how the Metis people of the American southern Great Lakes region in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin made individual and familial choices about ethnic identification from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries that enabled them to survive colonization in their homeland. I argue that Metis people maintained, through kinship networks, a private identity as a collective, distinct group of …

Performance, Representation, Reception, And The Lost Cause: Re-Framing The History Of Confederate Monuments Through Embodied Assemblies, Joshua Adam Rutherford

Theses and Dissertations

Discussion of Confederate monuments has been invigorated in academic, social, and political debates during the twenty-first century. As these monuments became entangled with police brutality following the George Floyd protests, scholars have tried to understand how this history connects with the systemic injustices faced by black Americans. Because financial inequities limited the ability of black Americans to erect monuments and photograph demonstrations during Reconstruction the archive is riddled with gaps in representation, which I close by following Diana Taylor’s suggestion that we turn to the “repertoire” of performance. My thesis turns away the monuments themselves by investigating the forms of …

Eagle Eye Vs. Gear Jammer, Jessica Danielle Ellis

Theses and Dissertations

Where similarities in class struggle have historically operated as a unifying force globally, the American crafted mythos isolates the individual and dehumanizes those that do not fall within the parameters of the cowboy archetype. The national protagonist is turned into a class traitor and an extension of government power.

Ordinary Power: Frontier Sentimentalism And Cultural Perceptions Of Gender In The Nineteenth-Century West, Erin Elizabeth Hastings

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will examine nineteenth-century women and their primary role in the cultural formation of frontier sentimentalism. White, middle class women primarily moved west with their husbands and families, initially to the Midwest in the early nineteenth century, and were continuing to settle in the Great Plains and further west by the end of the century. The first generation of women who migrated west were the pioneers of frontier sentimentalism, but it prevailed in successive generations of westering women. This thesis will argue that in the formation of their own form of sentimentalism, nineteenth-century women were at the heart of …